Overwhelming Feelings Quotes & Sayings

Normal memory gradually fades into the past. Traumatic and repressed memories have a tendency to linger around. They are splintered into fragments during overwhelming events experienced as a child. Images, sensations, emotions, and beliefs are torn apart. These disconnected pieces can later erupt into consciousness as separate "memories." These fragments may surface in the form of explicit memories, which are frighteningly vivid snapshot or video-like images of traumatic experiences; or they may surface as implicit memories, which include physical sensations, emotions, or beliefs that were part of the original traumatic experiences. When implicit fragments emerge into the present without an accompanying visually explicit memory, it is very hard to discern that these feelings of anxiety, fear, shame, rage, numbness, and loneliness are related to prior trauma. — Connie A. Lofgreen

... how overwhelming the feelings of love and terror, the desperate desire to protect. How much stronger would those feelings be if it were her own child? Perhaps too strong to bear. — Kate Atkinson

In Kendall's mind, there were only three types of women: good, bad, and fallen. Being a journalist muddied my position in his moral hierarchy, but Kendall tried to ignore that inconvenience and slot me into the first group. It was cold comfort. I'd read that in a man like this, afflicted with the conditions Dr. Stone had mentioned, admiration was intertwined with hatred. So labeling a person "good" meant he would almost automatically see her as withholding approval. Any resulting feelings of stress or shame then morphed immediately into overwhelming rage. That — Claudia Rowe

Anything that's human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone. — Fred Rogers

Your instincts may tell you that you can't survive if you experience feelings. But they are leftover child instincts. They're the ones that first told you to freeze your feelings. They themselves are frozen and haven't grown with the rest of you. These instincts don't know that you're far more capable of learning to cope with overwhelming emotion now than when you were a [child]. — Maureen Brady

Procrastination is a common reaction to feeling overwhelmed or fear of failure. Instead of taking on too much at once and overwhelming yourself, break things down and take one small action step at a time. — Lauren Mackler

The world did not have me in mind; it had no mind. It was a coincidental collection of things and people, of items, an I myself was one such item ... the things in the world did not necessarily cause my overwhelming feelings; the feelings were inside me, beneath my skin, behind my ribs, withing my skull. They were even, to some extent, under my control. — Annie Dillard

Civil unrest occurs when the feelings of overwhelming powerlessness hit critical mass. — Michael Connelly

An overwhelming curiosity makes me ask myself what their lives might be like. I want to know what they do, where they're from, their names, what they're thinking about at that moment, what they regret, what they hope for, their past loves, their current dreams ... and if they happen to be women (especially the young ones) then the urge becomes intense.
How quickly would you want to see her naked, admit it, and naked through to her heart. How you try to learn where she comes from, where she's going, why she's here and not elsewhere!
While letting your eyes wander all over her, you imagine love affairs for her, you ascribe her deep feelings. You think of the bedroom she must have, and a thousand things besides ... right down to the battered slippers into which she must slip her feet when she gets out of bed. — Gustave Flaubert

Sometimes when I open my Bible to read, a verse leaps off the page and I know God is speaking to me. Sometimes I read and nothing seems to be illuminated. Sometimes I pray and have the keen sense that He is listening to every word and will answer me. Sometimes when I pray, I have no awareness that He's anywhere around. Sometimes when I go to church or draw aside for some quiet reflection, I have the overwhelming sense that Jesus is right beside me. At other times in the exact same settings, I have no conscious awareness of His presence at all. And I know by each experience - as I read my Bible and pray and work and worship - that He is teaching me to live by FAITH, not by my feelings. — Anne Graham Lotz

I want you, Anastasia," he murmurs. "I love and I hate, and I love arguing with you. It's very new. I need to know that we're okay. It's the only way I know how."
"My feelings for you haven't changed," I whisper.
His proximity is overwhelming, exhilarating. The familiar pull is there, all my synapses goading me toward him, my inner goddess at her most libidinous. Staring at the patch of hair in the V of his shirt, I bite my lip, helpless, driven by desire - I want to taste him there.
He's so close, but he doesn't touch me. His heat is warming my skin.
"I'm not going to touch you until you say yes," he says softly. "But right now, after a really shitty morning, I want to bury myself in you and just forget everything but us. — E.L. James

Let's dispel this bloody stupid myth of love at first sight, all this tear-jerking romance you see in films, all this overwhelming passion. They're feelings I just can't conceive of, which are capable of reducing an individual who was previously perfectly self-sufficient into a human wreck suffering from all the most worrying psychiatric disorders, from obsessive-compulsive disorder to abandonment anxiety. — Celia Hayes

If manifestations of her love are overwhelming and sometimes seem imprudent, it's because the intensity of such caring doesn't exist in other areas of life. Ma does not love from behind a protective shield. I'm incapable of opening up to people in the way she does. Ma isn't afraid of being vulnerable and doesn't measure relationships in terms of what she can gain. If her feelings are hurt, she doesn't hide the pain or seek revenge. She stumbles over the setback as though it's one of life's quirky tests of fortitude and moves on without storing any resentment. — Adib Khan

At his age, it can be overwhelming and painful to harbor a thought accompanied by too much nostalgia. Not that he wanted to. Mabel, in her final years, had stopped listening to music. The songs of her teenage years brought her back to people and feelings of that time - people she could never see again and sensations that were no longer coming. It was too much for her. There are people who can manage such things. There are those of us who can no longer walk, but can close our eyes and remember a summer hike through a field, or the feeling of cool grass beneath our feet, and smile. Who still have the courage to embrace the past, and give it life and a voice in the present. But Mabel was not one of those people. Maybe she lacked that very form of courage. Or maybe her humanity was so complete, so expansive, that she would be crushed by her capacity to imagine the love that was gone. — Derek B. Miller

Every person in the world, including yourself, will encounter various trials throughout life. Satan seeks to defeat you by tempting you to trust your own wisdom, to live according to your self-centered feelings, and to gratify the desires of your flesh. In contrast, God's will is for you to be an overwhelming conqueror in all of these tests for His honor and glory. — John C. Broger

I loved my life, but my choices were overloading and overwhelming me. Listening to inner feelings and fulfilling some of these urges when they come along is incredibly important. — Pamela Stephenson

The feelings are overwhelming, but they're not you. They're the feelings. You are separate, and you are strong and amazing and good. — Heather Sellers

How can Sophie hate Josh tonight when Friday morning she loved him?' I ask. What I mean is How can I have had such strong feelings for Ethan when now I don't know what I feel aside from overwhelming mortification? — Erin McCahan

Just as a child, before I ever knew what ballet was, there was something in me where I was always searching for something structured, something that was bigger than me, and something so historical that I could be a part of. I didn't find that until I stepped into the ballet world, and it was overwhelming, the feeling of being a part of something that's bigger than you. — Misty Copeland

What I think we as the church lack, though, is a place to talk about how things really are right now. In our desire to be an inspiration to one another we often veil what is true, because what is true is not always inspirational. It's not easy to watch or personally experience a marriage on the verge of divorce, or a child battling cancer, or a betrayal of the worst kind, or dreams lost in the dust, or overwhelming feelings of despair or emptiness. But these things are real. And hurting believers whose lives are in tatters need real help. If we were able to put aside our need for approval long enough to be authentic, then, surely, we would be living as the church. — Sheila Walsh

Anastasia," he whispers. "What are you doing to me?" "I could say the same to you," I whisper back. Taking a deep breath, he kisses my forehead and leaves. He strolls purposefully down the path toward his car as he runs his hand through his hair. Glancing up as he opens his car door, he smiles his breathtaking smile. My answering smile is weak, completely dazzled by him, and I'm reminded once more of Icarus soaring too close to the sun. I close the front door as he climbs into his sports car. I have an overwhelming urge to cry; a sad and lonely melancholy grips and tightens around my heart. Dashing back to my bedroom, I close the door and lean against it, trying to rationalize my feelings. I can't. Sliding to the floor, I put my head in my hands as my tears begin to flow. — E.L. James

So this is love, he said to himself, trying to examine his own overwhelming feelings with the rational fragment of his mind. This is the powerful, horrible longing that made Mother marry that miserable tyrant I had to call Father. How many unbelievably stupid heroes in stories did insanely dangerous things because they were in love? More to the pint, how many insane things am I going to do because of it? — Orson Scott Card

I'm completely in love with the world but also terrified of it. It creates some overwhelming feelings. Wanting to battle out that joy and fear is part of my music. — Florence Welch

Sometimes, waking early before the others, wandering the rooms wrapped in a blanket or drinking my tea in the empty kitchen, I had that most rare of feelings, the sense that the world, so consistently overwhelming and incomprehensible, in fact has an order, oblique as it may seem, and I a place within it. — Nicole Krauss

The overwhelming joy of conversion or a new calling is often followed by feelings of being overwhelmed with duties and doctrines. The first joyous feelings are real and give one much-needed initial momentum. But the genuine exhilaration is soon followed by the need to perspire and to pedal. — Neal A. Maxwell

Lock looked down at the green wooden floor between his black boots. "I can't blame you for what you feel, my lady. But I can't help what I feel, either." "I'm so sorry." Kat put a hand on his knee to comfort him. Then she pulled it away quickly. "Oh, I didn't think. Did that hurt you just now? Me touching you without Deep being here?" "A little." Lock gave her a sad smile and put her hand back on his knee. "But it's worth it." "That's sweet." He looked so dejected and his feelings of sadness and loss were so overwhelming, Kat felt like she was going to cry if they sat that way much longer. — Evangeline Anderson

I am continuously struck by how frequently the various thought processes of the inner critic trigger overwhelming emotional flashbacks. This is because the PTSD-derived inner critic weds shame and self-hate about imperfection to fear of abandonment, and mercilessly drive the psyche with the entwined serpents of perfectionism and endangerment. Recovering individuals must learn to recognize, confront and disidentify from the many inner critic processes that tumble them back in emotional time to the awful feelings of overwhelming fear, self-hate, hopelessness and self-disgust that were part and parcel of their original childhood abandonment. — Pete Walker

What man ever openly apologizes for slander? It is not so much a feeling of slander as it is that of a massive lie, a misdeed not only to the slandered but also to those manipulated in the process. He has made them all, every one, his enemies, thereupon he is so overwhelmed with guilt that he will deny it until his grave. — Criss Jami

Fathers can seem powerful and overwhelming to their daughters. Let her see your soft side. Express your feelings and reactions. Tell her where you came from and how you got there. Let her see that you have had fears, failures, anxious times, hurts, just like hers, even though you may look flawless to her. — Stella Chess

We do not know if she collapsed because of overwhelming joy, extreme surprise, grave disappointment, or heavy anxiety that for the next months and years she would live with a human male, because in fact she had been honest when she told her girlfriends that she had given up on men, OR NONE OF THE ABOVE. — Kyoko Yoshida